University Paris Nanterre, Laboratoire Parisien de Psychologie Sociale, Département de Psychologie, 200 Avenue de la République, 92000, Nanterre, France.
University of Geneva, Département de Psychologie Sociale, Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education, 40 boulevard du Pont d'Arve, 1205, Geneva, Switzerland.
Appetite. 2019 Jun 1;137:134-144. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2019.02.019. Epub 2019 Mar 3.
Specific attributes of a food product can cause it to be spontaneously but wrongly perceived as healthier than it really is (i.e., the health halo effect). Notably, there is preliminary evidence that individuals evaluate organic food as less caloric than regular, non-organic food. However, explanations regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying the health halo effect remain scarce. Drawing from the implicit cognition literature, we hypothesize that this effect could be due to (a) the reactivation in memory of implicit positive evaluations and/or (b) the reactivation of a semantic association between the concepts "organic" and "non-caloric". We first conducted a 2 (Product label: organic versus non-organic) × continuous (Valence-IAT score) × continuous (Calorie-IAT score) study (N = 151) to test these hypotheses, and conducted a conceptual replication in a second study (N = 269). We computed Bayesian analyses alongside frequentist analyses in order to test for potential null hypotheses, as well as frequencies and Bayesian meta-regression including both datasets. Both methods provided consistent results. First, Bayesian analyses yielded extremely strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the organic label leads to an underestimation of caloric value. Second, they provided strong evidence that this effect is not moderated by implicit evaluations. Hence, we replicated the organic halo effect but showed that, surprisingly, it does not arise from implicit associations. We discuss these findings and propose directions for future research regarding the mechanisms underlying calories (under)estimation.
食品的某些特性可能会导致其被错误地认为比实际更健康（即健康光环效应）。值得注意的是，有初步证据表明，与常规的非有机食品相比，个体认为有机食品的卡路里含量较低。然而，对于导致健康光环效应的认知机制的解释仍然很少。从内隐认知文献中，我们假设这种效应可能是由于（a）对隐含积极评价的记忆的重新激活，和/或（b）“有机”和“非卡路里”这两个概念之间的语义联想的重新激活。我们首先进行了一项 2（产品标签：有机与非有机）×连续（效价 IAT 评分）×连续（卡路里 IAT 评分）研究（N=151）来检验这些假设，并在第二项研究（N=269）中进行了概念复制。我们同时进行了贝叶斯分析和频率分析，以检验潜在的零假设，以及包括两个数据集的频率和贝叶斯元回归。这两种方法都提供了一致的结果。首先，贝叶斯分析强烈支持有机标签会导致对卡路里值的低估的假设。其次，它们提供了强有力的证据表明，这种效应不受内隐评价的调节。因此，我们复制了有机光环效应，但令人惊讶的是，它不是来自内隐联想。我们讨论了这些发现，并提出了关于卡路里（低估）估计机制的未来研究方向。
